Drowning in Emails? Here's How 5 Bosses Handle Their Inboxes
No cherry-picking allowed.
Photo: Andrew Neel for Pexels
The inbox is an equal opportunity offender. Emails have no respect for office hours or lunchtime. They wild out at all hours and it's on us to manage them. But how? We asked five women—those who run their own companies and those who freelance—all about their unique inbox management tips.
Here’s the bad and the good of it: The inbox inbounds will never stop as long as you're making moves. To help you lower your cortisol levels and avoid overwhelm, here's a breakdown of how five bosses HANDLE their inboxes and whittle that number down to zero. (Yes, it’s possible to get to inbox zero!)
TINA WELLS, FOUNDER & CEO BUZZ MARKETING GROUP
Staying on top of and managing emails is a top priority for me. I average about 500 each day. I answer whatever I can immediately. I also have an amazing team at BuzzMG, and I'm fortunate to have an internal shorthand with them, so even just forwarding a note with a meeting request and not having to specify "please set up a coffee meeting with xx" saves so much time.
My team doesn't really use email to communicate. We use Slack and store important files in Dropbox, so it's really easy to do our work and send messages without email.
I swear by Scott Belsky's book "Making Ideas Happen" and make sure I clear out all back burner emails by the last day of the month. I file important notes from clients in specific folders. I also have years worth of sent emails. You never know when you need to find important info!
IVKA ADAM, FOUNDER & CEO ICONERY
Some of the best advice I ever got had to do with email strategy: When you need someone to get back to you on multiple topics, make each one a separate email with clearly defined and themed email subject lines. Why? Because some of the topics may be shorter and easier to respond to than others and you’re not waiting on the person at the other end to gather responses to all topics at once.
This has helped tremendously to both facilitate efficiency and keep my inbox to a minimum.
JASMINE STAR, BRAND & MARKETING GURU
My business is built on personal connections. My entire focus is on making sure people feel seen, heard, and known. As a result, I have set strict hours of operation and engagement. Yes, that means, I allocate 70 minutes every morning to respond to all email. Other than that time, I don't respond to email until the next day. Similarly, I set certain times to blog and engage on social media. I do my best to interact with people who are interacting with me.
KARIN ELDOR, FREELANCE WRITER & CONTENT CREATOR
"Touch it once." This one changed my life. It's exactly that: when you open an email and read it, don't let it sit idly in your inbox. If it will take you less than 5 minutes to reply, then do it on the spot and file it away. Don't start reading the same email more than once, it's a huge time suck. Of course, there are emails that deserve more thought or even a more in-depth reply. In this case, reply right away to confirm receipt, and let the sender know they can expect a response "by EOD," or whatever timeline makes sense.
Then sit down and draft your reply, during your dedicated email time. The point is, because we get in the habit of checking our email on-the-go, while waiting for our favorite Netflix show to cue up, and basically all the time, we end up reading the same email more than once and not doing anything about it. By the way, "touch it once" is a great productivity tip to apply to all tasks, especially for the perfectionists out there! If it will take you 2 minutes, just get it done and move on.
No cherry-picking: When you scan your inbox, don't be selective with what you read and reply to. First, do a quick scan for urgencies. Then open and reply to your emails in sequence, rather than "cherry-picking" the ones you deal with ASAP. This one's a bit tougher to stick to, but you'll see that managing your inbox during scheduled blocks of time throughout the day and blasting through your inbox, is much more productive than dealing with rando emails, all day.
BELMA McCAFFREY, WRITER & CREATOR OF WORK BIGGER
Unroll.me is an app that lets me quickly unsubscribe from emails that are no longer relevant, and it allows me to roll up some of my emails so I can review them all at once versus reading them throughout the day.
I also just started using Boomerang for Gmail. I can schedule reminders to read certain messages later versus leaving them as unread in my inbox. This eases my stress level because I don't have "unread" messages staring at me reminding me of tasks I need to complete.
Although difficult, I also like to schedule when I check my email throughout the day. I aim for once in the morning, once around lunchtime, and once in the evening. This is less about controlling my inbox and more about controlling how I respond to the inbox. It makes me feel more in control and organized, with 100+ emails a day and all.
This post was originally published on May 14, 2018, and has since been updated.
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Our 5 Favorite Email Marketing Platforms
Send, convert, profit.
Whether you have a business in place or just the inkling of an idea, it’s never too early (or late) to beef up your communication with customers. Long gone are the days of spending money on print ads. With the creation of email, it has never been easier to find someone looking to buy what you’re selling.
These five email marketing sites are just waiting to help you and your business connect with that next dream client.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp was made for getting your feet wet. You can start using the site free of charge if you have 2000 subscribers or less. As your contacts list grows, you can upgrade your account at any time to either the Grow or Pro Plan without affecting your existing account. Mailchimp offers unique and easy-to-use design templates as well as Facebook and Instagram ads to match. If you’re still into physical mail, they also have a postcard option, so your customers’ mailboxes can get some love, too.
HubSpot
HubSpot believes in businesses building better relationships with their customers, which is why they offer a completely free option known as HubSpot CRM (customer relationship management). It offers the ability to email up to one million contacts, so you never have to worry about outgrowing it. While HubSpot CRM remains free forever, you can build upon it with any (or all) of the three extensions: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or Service Hub. HubSpot also offers Instagram and Facebook ads along with their emails.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact not only formats emails for desktop, they also have your phone in mind (because let’s be honest, we all check email on our phones). With templates for both desktop and phone, you can easily personalize your emails to look professional and enticing on all sorts of devices. While it only offers a 60-day free trial, the most basic plan on the site starts at $20 a month. Want to make your subscribers feel like family? There’s also the option of sending out specialized emails for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions.
Drip
Drip sells itself as the first e-commerce customer relationship manager, and it focuses on how best to get a customer to buy your product. With multiple app integrations, Drip can be tailored to meet your needs. Individualized messages can be sent to customers to help build meaningful relationships, as well as specialized Facebook ads and postcards. Drip’s basic plan starts at $49 a month and can support up to 2,500 subscribers.
SendinBlue
SendinBlue will help you create the professional newsletter of your dreams. Simply drag and drop the sleek and clean design blocks to create your own template. The system uses an algorithm to help you send emails out at the best time for each of your customers, so you reach them when it’s most convenient for them (and effective for you). SendinBlue’s free plan allows you to send 300 emails a day and is GDRP compliant as of May 2018.
Do you have another favorite email marketing service? Share with us in the comments!
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Email Etiquette: "Hey Ladies" vs. "Hey Guys," the Dilemma
Hay is for horses.
Gif credit: Michael Young
If, we're to take the admonitions of our grammar school days seriously, "hey" is an inappropriately informal way to address someone. And yet, the term "Hey Ladies," appears in my inbox, at present moment, exactly 1267 times.
That's 1267 times an email last year contained the words "Hey Ladies," in succession. Now, I don't take any issue with its formality or lack thereof. In fact, I am a rather informal emailer. I've sent emails to strangers with greetings like, "UM HI." (The response rate to "UM HI," is 100% if you're wondering.)
So no. It's not the "hey" I struggle with. It's the "ladies." Which, might seem odd considering I work and champion the work of women. Ladies. HEY LADIES! And yet...
"Hey Ladies," irks me. I don't like being called a lady. It feels diminutive to me, like I am somehow reduced or reducing the woman on the receiving end of my email stick to gender. But my solution thus far is not any better. Some might even say, it's worse.
If you're asking just what I use when addressing multiple women on an email chain? The answer is this: "Hey Guys."
"Hey guys, following up on this!" "Hey guys, me again." "Hey guys, hey hey hey."
The issue is, if I'm truly, really, all of the honest about why I use it, it's because "guy" in my mind is gender neutral. "Lady" is girly and pink and all of the "things" about my "gender" that I've never quite identified with. "Lady" is the hug I'm super uncomfortable giving you when we first meet. (I'm a handshaker OK?) It's the smiley face and the exclamation point I don't want to use, but do.
The bigger issue is-- it's not those things. Not even close. Instead, my stomp-my-email-yard refusal to address women as women, plays into the idea that a woman needs to be "one of the guys," "can hang like the guys," etc., in order to be cool. To succeed. To get ahead.
"Hey ladies," to me, is an insult. "Hey guys," is praise. And UGH to my thinking this. I'm sorry. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. It's upsetting to me that it's taken me this long to figure it out. I know that my "hey guys," is is giving power to the concept that a “guy” is more powerful than a “lady.”
Categorically untrue. And I will adjust my correspondence as such. Hey, better late than never?